


That night, that year of now done darkness

by a_walking_shadow



Category: Doctor Who (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: Angst, Audio 011: The Apocalypse Element, Gen, canon-typical Dalek nastiness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-04
Updated: 2019-03-04
Packaged: 2019-11-12 02:24:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18002009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_walking_shadow/pseuds/a_walking_shadow
Summary: Lady President Romanadvoratrelundar, on Etra Prime.





	That night, that year of now done darkness

**Author's Note:**

> 1) Sorry. I love Romana, but I'm so terrible to her. 
> 
> 2) The title comes from "Carrion Comfort" by Gerard Manley Hopkins. He annoys me greatly, but occasionally there will be an absolute gem in one of his poems. (Most of them are a bit too rambling and pointless, even for me, which is really saying something.)
> 
> 3) Beware paraphrasing from Macbeth, in parts of this. 
> 
> 4) this wasn't intentional, but I read "Seeing I" by Jonathan Blum and Kate Orman recently, and I think their description of the 8th Doctor may have influenced some of this. I highly recommend that book (especially if you enjoy your favourite characters being tortured horribly, which, if you're reading this...)

  _droop deadly sometimes in their cells, or wring their barriers in bursts of fear or rage_ \- The Caged Skylark, Gerard Manley Hopkins

* * *

 

It had never been still, at first. Movement and noise everywhere, fear flickering on the edge of her thoughts, with the constant stirrings of rage and rebellion, just below the surface. The ~~exhilarating~~ terrifying promise of change on the horizon. It was exhausting.

She was… not happy, exactly, to be Gallifreyan, not since that meant so much more attention. But relieved? Yes, relieved. Relieved that she only needed to snatch an hour or two of sleep each night. Even so, the chaos and fear of those first days-weeks-months-years meant that even _that_ much proved a challenge.

They looked to her for guidance, because she was- is- the Lady Romanadvoratrelundar, President of Gallifrey and all her dominions, leader of the High Council of the Time Lords. Keeper of the Legacy of Rassilon, holder of the-

Well, she’s sure that there were a bunch more titles, but remembering them all takes far too much effort, nowadays.

(It’s all you have, a voice whispers-nudges-hisses-breathes on the edge of her consciousness, they’ve taken everything else, don’t let them take the presidency too.)

The Daleks don’t like her title, her power, the way she speaks and her people stop to listen. They issued orders and her diplomats looked to her expectantly, and so did the mechanics and the guards. It’s a blatant challenge to their authority, yet she revels in the moment, the way she commands the room despite their bristling armoury-

Her people turned towards her, waiting for permission to obey someone else, and then they were all dead. Every last one of them, gunned down in a callous show of force because they didn’t defer to their new masters fast enough.

That was the first time they hauled her away for the _special_ treatment. She didn’t let them drag her, of course, instead she marched down the corridor with all the dignity she could muster, the sight of a hundred of her allies lit by laser-fire imprinted on her eyelids, the pained, terrified screams of her fellow Time Lords fading from the edges of her mind.

 (They killed the Sunari, too, when their leader looked to her before he moved for the mining equipment, and they killed the delegates from Unvoss when they spent too long staring at the bodies of the Sunari. The Monan Host got the message, after that.)

She’d like to say that it’s those memories which terrify her, that it’s her allies collapsing around her that haunts her nightmares, that nothing the Daleks could do to her could possibly compare. She’d like to be that selfless. She’d like to be that brave.

(She’s not.)

 

The silence came when they marched her back to the cells, an unknown amount of time later _(and wasn’t that the most telling thing of all, that in what could only be a fraction of a span they had left her delirious, unable to focus on one of her main senses)_ and her few survivors laid eyes on her.

Feeling the gaze of hundreds- all Monan and Time Lord, she realised, sickened, but both staring at her in horror- she straightened her spine as much as she could manage and walked with her head held high and said absolutely nothing, and then all of a sudden, they did, a roar of sound and fury-

It meant nothing in the end. There is very little that a group of angry Monans and Time Lords armed with nothing but picks can do against a Dalek occupation force. But the fires of their rage warmed her, and even as their dying screams echoed in her mind, a small part of her smiled. Just because an act of rebellion is small doesn’t mean it is futile.

(at some point, she started wondering if the desperate fury of her fellow prisoners was worth the cost. Never out loud, of course, because she knew that if they saw her give up hope then they would too. And as long as they had a leader- as long as she was their leader- they would fight, Time Lords and Monans side by side. Who knew a Dalek invasion would settle her alliances so well?)

 

The Daleks worked it out, of course. They were, by then, well-versed in dealing with troublesome prisoners and quiet, stubborn resistance, and this pesky little thing called _hope_.

The cells with the others had never been silent, but now- now, on the rare occasions when she sees anyone else- there is nothing but silence, and the telepathic equivalent of empty airwaves.

No leader arose in her absence, no fights, no rebellions. Just quiet, exhausted, submissive acceptance.

‘YOU WILL NOT RESIST THE MIGHT OF THE DALEKS’, her captors say, and she says, ‘I am the Lady Romanadvoratrelundar, President of the High Council of the Time Lords, and I will not bow down to you’, and the traitor in her head smirks-sighs-taunts, _you are a president without a populace, a shepherd without a flock, far from home, and your supporters have abandoned you, unit one-one-seven._ She does not listen to this, and instead, she says, again, ‘I am the Lady Romanadvoratrelundar-’

(Repeating it is hard, but if she does it enough then the Daleks get angry, and then she’s in too much pain for her subconscious to refer to her by anything, not even a number, and eventually she falls unconscious and if she’s lucky then she’ll wake up back in her cell, surrounded by silence and cold, bare walls. If not… well, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Maybe if she says it enough then it’ll come true. (Surely, if that was going to happen, then it would’ve done so years ago.)

 

It was easy, before, when she had anger. She could work with anger, be it hers or others.

Apathy, on the other hand, is well beyond her.

 

The cell- her cell- is small. She checked the dimensions, years ago, and found that if she stretched her arms wide then her fingers brushed each side, and if she stood up and reached over her head then she found rough stone. It’s entirely possible that they’ve expanded it, at some point, but she hasn’t bothered to check, because what would be the point? A few more centimetres, when her whole world consists of these walls, and a stretch of corridor with the same number of steps every time, and a handful of rooms that she shudders at the thought of. This place- these few, tiny patches of reality, this single timeline creeping relentlessly forward, chiselling away one second of eternity at a time- it might as well be all that exists.

There was a time, she knows, when the universe- her universe- was larger than this, when it stretched across a myriad of different worlds and an infinity of moments, arranged in whatever order she chose. Now, though?

She sits, alone in the silence, and dreads the moment when it will be disturbed.


End file.
